To Know the Secret Things

I got up very early this morning, about 5 am. I didn't want to, resisted it every step of the way. I'm a night person or I always thought so anyway. This morning's sunrise and the thoughts that it made me think just may have changed that.

It was still dark outside when I opened the door leading to my back yard. I was a little hesitant to completely open the door to the dark which is a habit I have had since childhood. For reasons I can't explain I have a fear of the dark. It's not the dark that bothers me as much as what's in the dark that has always made me nervous. But that's another story for another blog post.

So there I was, standing at the back door, trying not to open it too wide, when I heard the first stirrings of the wind through the tree branches. You don't know this about me yet but the wind is probably my favorite natural phenomenon. I love it. So hearing the wind was enough to make me overcome my fears and step into the darkness outside.

The moon is waning now but it was still full enough that it cast an uneartly blueish glow through the tree branches and onto the lawn. For a moment I felt transported. The whole time I was out there in the dark and listening to the wind I thought about something that I always say to my self in my head but that was hard to say out loud:

"I have always wanted to know the secret things"


This is fanciful thinking, I know this intellectually. But on a primal intuitive level I have always felt that it was my purpose to know all about the things that are secret and seemingly unknowable. In my daily life I constantly meet people who seemed compelled to tell me their secrets. I am a virtual stranger to them and yet they tell me all kinds of things, things I would not dare utter to the world if it were my life, my business. I trip when I hear some of these secrets but never, never do I betray these people's secrets with a disapproving facial expression or open displays of shock.  And I have to say here that if there is anyone you want to tell a secret to I'm the right one. I respect privacy and I actually honor the notion that people feel they can tell me the things they tell me. I absolutely don't tell.

I do find this kind of disclosure ironic though since it damn near takes the threat of death to make me spill anything about myself. I can talk to a person for hours and never reveal a single personal thing about myself. I don't really trust people with my private thoughts. This isn't always a good thing because it limits people from really getting to know me. This blog is my exercise in opening up a little bit. But full disclosure here: if it's really personal it won't end up on this blog baby. Trust me. That's just the way I am.

I guess you could call me a keeper of secrets and that's in keeping with how I see myself. But I love knowledge too and especially exclusive knowledge. I guess that's why I'm so interested in the hidden aspects of life and the universe. I just want to know. There is a fine line between knowing enough and knowing too much. I want to know as much as I can handle.

Standing in that corner of my backyard, with the wind streaming through the trees and the moon casting its glow was the perfect backdrop to such thoughts. The sun had not risen yet; there wasn't even a hint of it in the eastern sky. But this early morning scene fired my imagination and rekindled that yearning to know, really know, inside me once again.

Maybe I'll start waking up early in the mornings now to see if I can capture it again.